The Baja 1000 is a gruelling 1,000-mile race through treacherous desert terrain and Jay Leno got a taste of it

by
Jay Leno | November 12, 2014

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Worldwide, the Dakar Rally is the best known of off-road races. This side of The Pond, it is a race called the Baja 1000, down the Baja peninsular of Mexico. This year’s race starts Nov. 13.

Dakar last three weeks. The Baja lasts as long as it takes to drive 1,000 miles. For the top guys like Ivan ‘Ironman’ Stewart, that means around 24 hours at the wheel with almost no break.

The fastest trucks in the Baja are bespoke race machines. But the thing that appeals to me is there is a class for almost stock, or showroom machines, so you can actually buy a truck exactly like the truck that won its class, with the exact same engine and the exact same specification.

That’s also when racing is the most effective in terms of selling vehicles, when the race car or the truck or whatever the vehicle is, is – with the exception of a few things – an exact copy of the one you can buy in the street. The last example to happen at top level circuit racing was Le Mans back in ’95, with McLaren when they took basically a street car and made it run at Le Mans.

Trucks like Stewat’s Toyota Tundra (the one that towed the Space Shuttle through Los Angeles a while back) are now probably the last pure vehicles where you can literally drive to a major event, race the vehicle and drive it home.

Stewart invited me out to the California desert to try out his Baja race truck. It had massive tires and a roll cage, and all the stuff you need to stay safe on event where, if the duration and the terrain is not tough enough, spectators deliberately booby-trap the race to make it more interesting for them. Otherwise it was pretty well the same as it was when it rolled off the production line.

When I opened the hood of the Tundra and asked the Toyota guys what was done to the engine, they said “absolutely nothing.” It even had the air conditioning and all that stuff hooked up. And I thought, well this is finally an affordable, fun way to go racing. I think the one thing that keeps most people out of racing these days is how expensive it is.

And even though doing something like the Baja is not inexpensive, it’s certainly cheaper than F1 or stock cars, or even vintage car racing because at no point do you really over-stress the motor. You’re not revving the heck out of it, you’re just trying to keep it moving. And with the exception of reinforcing suspension pieces and things like that, that’s all you have to do.

A few months ago, you might remember, I tried out the Mini which won the Dakar. I loved the thrill of driving on loose sand. It reminded me of growing up driving on snow in New England. The Toyota is way bigger than the Mini and this time we were on fast rough desert trails not sand.

But the thrill to me is you’re going fast and you certainly get the impression of going fast. You’re going 75, 80 miles an hour over extremely rough terrain and you’re getting bounced around. But it’s not at the level of 180, 200 miles an hour which sort of – at least I think for the average guy, sort of goes beyond safe and becomes just crazy.

Race car drivers are true athletes. They used to say Sir Stirling Moss could read newsprint at twenty feet. And their reaction times are a thousand times better than the average person. So consequently when something goes wrong at 150-200 miles an hour they’re able to compensate, whereas you or I or the normal person would probably have a horrific accident. With off-road racing it’s not only – it’s the fact that you can physically make it without damaging your vehicle or getting lost or any number of things. I’m not saying it’s any less than those others, but it happens at a reasonable speed that your mind and your body can take in.

Ivan Stewart is a great teacher. Years of experience has kept him unflappable. His tips are simple but effective. You learn to try and get the weight off the front end – by either accelerating or braking hard so it lifts or causes the nose to come down. You learn to sort of steer with the throttle, making the front and the rear wheels able to steer you.

It’s intense to cope with corners, bumps, dips and everything else. No nice smooth asphalt with the same apexes on every lap. You’re in first and second gear a lot, although you can get up into the high gears quite a bit when you find a flat stretch of desert.

That’s when Stewart said you can take a little rest, when you can see a straight road – but for the most part you have no idea what’s over the next hill, so when you run up a hill you’re going really fast, when you get to the top of that hill you’ve got no idea what’s on the other side.You sort of brake quickly and then come down, never knowing what’s on the other side if you’re going to get a huge rock or a tree stump, or dive into a hole. You learn to navigate, always thinking 20 to 50 feet ahead because that’s where you’re looking.

Doing the Baja can be great fun, but I’m not sure I could do it for 24 hours. I mean, that’s the difference between a race-car driver and a regular person, but I still had great fun doing it for a few hours. You can pace yourself because idea is to finish the race. A lot of people don’t even finish because either they get tired, they’re over-zealous or they go too fast and they damage the vehicle by coming down off the crest of a hill and bend the suspension or even rolling the truck, which happens a lot.